Wow, how timely!
I feel like the activities I've been doing this last week are so on-target for this thread!
Background about the program before I respond to this thread...
Here in Arizona we have a program called PASS where business leaders get together with educators and create a week long program where educators (voluntarily, during their vacation) visit a barrage of diffferent businesses in order to determine what THEY want in new hires. We know that not all students will go on to college and some will go straight into the work force. Those young people are typically unprepared, which means that we, as educators, are doing something wrong... we go to these businesses and they share with us what gets a person in the door, and what gets a person turned away without more than a cursory interview (if that). We also ask what we, as educators, can do to help these kids entering the workforce be better prepared.
Today was the end of the fourth day of this program. I have one more day and then the program is over. I visited 5 businesses, spending 4 hours at each one. The businesses I visited were very diverse: A WalMart Distribution Center, A one-doctor private office, a YMCA, the local power company, and a golf club (it IS Arizona after all). The OVERPOWERING message we've learned from these companies is that there ARE entry level positions available... but if you can't
enunciate your words, speak with proper grammer, have good people skills, be a self-starter, be prompt and able to communicate, you are
not going to be hired. We had a presentation from all the other groups of teachers who altogether visited 20 major businesses in the area, and the story was the same at all of these employers. Ethics, morality, communication, people skills. Without them, you're just not going to get much of a job. With them, the sky is the limit.
I believe that there is a rich cultural heritage for the african american people. I'm sure I've already broken half a dozen politically correct "laws" in the above sentence. I'm WHITE as can be. (bilingual and consider the hispanic culture as my own second culture). What I've seen, however, is that those who speak ebonics (I lived in Georgia for a year) sound uneducated and frankly idiotic. I think that if it takes being "bilingual" fine.... have both, but if a person who prefers ebonics cannot switch to a well articulated speech pattern that is foreign to the "ebonic" way of speaking, they are limiting themselves permanently... there is a VERY LOW ceiling beyond which people with this handicap cannot progress.
Flame me all you want for being politically incorrect, I never was good at those kinds of arguments, but what Wes and some others have said is very well stated and I agree wholeheartedly... and I hate the thought of what limits it will put on certain people...
Before I close up this post I want to share an experience I had...
In my second year teaching in the public school system a student transferred to my classroom from Chicago. Her parents were very concerned that she was getting some very "ghetto" type friends who were leading her astray, so they sent her to Arizona to live with her grandparents. Frankly I could NOT understand her when she came to my classroom. LaQuahn had slurred speech and my first impression was that she belonged in the "Life Skills" department... for those with very limited functional skills who would MAYBE get a low-paying institutional job for those with very low-IQ scores. AFter a time I learned that she was actually a lot brighter than she seemed. Not a rocket scientist, but not at the bottom of the barrel either. I'll never forget a meeting I had with her grandparents. Her grandmother worked at a prominent bank and was a very well-spoken individual. LaQuahn's biggest complaint was that her grandparents were sending her to a speech pathologist even though she could speak just fine (I won't try your patience with trying to mimic that phrase in ebonics). Her grandmother startled me by switching to the same dialect and driving home the point that one did not need to lose one's ability to communicate with friends and family to be able to succeed in the world... one had only to acheive the highest limits of the ENGLISH language in order to be successful, and her granddaughter would learn how to SPEAK if it killed her, and she didn't have to lose her ability to speak the down-home language. She just deserved better than the limits she was placing on herself.
I can remember two years later when LaQuahn graduated from high school. She had been accepted into a college and her ability to speak was improved a thousandfold. I also heard her talking "black" with some of her friends before modifying her language for a more professional demeanor. I think that her parents' decision to send her across the country was the best thing for her future. Perhaps she is missing out on some supreme ghetto relationship or ghetto job, but I think her future is much more bright.
Anyway, I'm done.
